


Enough To Live On

by potentiality_26



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, First Time, Fix-It, Ghosts, Happy Ending, M/M, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-29 11:07:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5125229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/potentiality_26/pseuds/potentiality_26
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Harry stated the obvious, something he should have seen that morning but hadn’t: “You shopped.”</i>
</p><p><i>“I been here quite a bit,” Eggsy explained, shrugging one shoulder. “And anyway it seemed… better. Food in the fridge, nothing gathering dust. Made it more like you’d be back any day now.” Eggsy swiped his knife over the bread with a little more aggression than was strictly necessary, but his voice was very even. “You said you’d come back and sort things. But you didn’t.”</i>  </p><p>Harry comes back a week after V-Day.  He isn't strictly alive, but that means less than he would have expected it to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Enough To Live On

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Enough To Go By" by Vienna Teng, mainly because it kept running through my head while I was writing this. Thanks to [klaudos](http://archiveofourown.org/users/klaudos/pseuds/klaudos) for the beta. Not Brit-picked.

Harry had been dead for a whole week before he went home. From the moment he woke up- if ‘woke up’ was the correct term, which he suspected it wasn’t- in that church parking lot and looked down at his own body lying in a pool of blood and uttered a string of expletives that could have made Eggsy Unwin blush, it had been the only thing he wanted to do. And yet he had lingered in HQ, as if having one more person he had known for twenty, even thirty, years look straight through him might somehow change things.  

On the way, it occurred to Harry that he might not technically have a home to go to. That Merlin had most likely already had the place cleared out. This, Harry knew from long experience, was how Merlin grieved. He carried on, business as usual, and let everything else simmer beneath the surface until it burned away altogether.  

But no- Harry found everything in his home just as he had left it. Or, rather, _almost_ as he had left it.

At first, it was nothing specific. He walked through the door- yes, literally through the door- and got only a nebulous sense of things being not quite in order, the kind of instinct Harry had not survived as a spy as long as he had without learning to trust. After that, details sprang to his mind one by one- that umbrella in the stand, right in along with his that wasn’t his, and this coat and those shoes, unfamiliar but still neatly put away with the others. Harry went through the entry way and into the sitting room, where the furnishings at least were the same, but… there, a chair was fractionally more to the left than usual, and here, a lamp was pushed just an inch too far back on the table. Harry noticed those things- didn’t know how not to notice them- but he wasn’t sure what they meant.      

Impulse, more than any conscious decision, led Harry upstairs and to his own bedroom. _It_ was just as he left it, nothing changed, except that there was clearly a shape lying in his bed, a tuft of hair just visible above the covers.

Harry approached, and yes- it was Eggsy, lying on his stomach, sound asleep.

If Harry hadn’t known how utterly gone on Eggsy he was, he would have realized it when he found it more endearing than anything that Eggsy’s mouth was half-open pressed against the pillow- but he had already known. Oh, how he had known. There had been a moment when Harry had accepted that he was about to die and thought not of all the work left undone- as he would have only a year before- but of Eggsy and all things he would never see if he died in that church parking lot. He would never watch Eggsy grow into himself, find his place in the world. Never stand on equal- or at least closer to equal- footing with him and tell him about the rather alarming feelings he had felt growing in himself. Never ask if there was any possibility at all of them being returned one day. And Harry would never touch him, never-

And it was best that those thoughts had been cut off as they were, Harry supposed. In fact, before he had discovered that perhaps his death was not as much of an ending as he had always assumed it would be, a part of Harry had concluded that it was for the best all around. He ought to be as far away from Eggsy Unwin as possible, and there was nothing farther than dead.

Except not, apparently.

By that time, Harry had a pretty good grip on the nature of his current existence, such as it was. No one could see or hear him, and unless he moved out of the way very smartly they walked right through him, which was enormously unsettling. It seemed that he could not interact with the world at all. Objects slipped through his hands. He had yet to find himself in a situation where tracing words on a steam-fogged pane of glass was a possibility- and he fully intended to avoid such an eventuality if at all possible- but he didn’t expect that would get him anywhere either.

All the same, Harry had caught himself thinking- several times- that he would have to put Merlin to work on their security where the differently corporeal were concerned, because it really was a shambles. He could walk through walls now, and obviously everyone had been busy running to and fro with slightly mad looks on their faces, busy making sure the world hadn’t ended, but even so it really wouldn’t do.

Harry’s job had been his whole life for thirty years, but even in HQ he had felt unmoored, disconnected. Beyond a general discomfort at the notion that invisible people could have been walking in and out of Kingsman for years with no one the wiser, Harry had felt rather like he was wandering through the world with only a half-remembered stake in it.  

But now he felt grounded again, oddly content to simply watch Eggsy sleep. Useless as he was at the moment, he would still do that.  

But why could he do that? Why was he here?

Not why was Harry here, as in ‘in his house’ or as in ‘in the world in general’- though both remained good questions. Why was Eggsy in Harry's house? Why was he asleep in Harry’s bed?

One of the first things Harry had learned when he made it back to HQ was that Merlin had gone after Valentine with the new Lancelot and Eggsy in tow and successfully prevented the end of the world as they knew it, and that Eggsy was on Kingsman’s payroll now, even though Merlin had yet to determine what he was actually going to do. Harry’s feelings on the subject had been complicated to say the least. He had been so very angry when Eggsy failed the test and then made all so much worse by threatening Harry’s- apparently traitorous- boss and then stealing a car. But when Harry found himself standing in that parking lot, all he had been able to think was _thank God._ Thank God Eggsy hadn’t been in that church with him. Thank God Kingsman wouldn’t get the chance to kill him too.  

Evidently, Merlin had had other plans, and Eggsy drew a considerable paycheck despite not being officially a knight. What was more, Merlin had found a place for Eggsy and his family to live not far from here. Harry knew because he had been there when Merlin set it all up. Eggsy had a house of his own- one that contained a bed, assumedly. So what was he doing here?    

“What are you doing here, Eggsy?” Harry asked. Moving through the world unheard, unseen and unnoticed, he had picked up the unfortunate habit of expressing thoughts aloud.  

“Miss you,” Eggsy murmured, apparently given to talking while asleep, or half-asleep.

Harry froze, hovering on the knife’s edge between curiousness and shame. Listening in while someone sleep-talked was not strictly a gentlemanly thing to do. _But he is in my house_ , Harry thought. _He is in my bed_ \- and it was better that Harry not think too hard about that, Eggsy in his _bed_. _And I am dead_ , Harry thought a moment after that. _I’m dead and where he sleeps is no more my business than who he misses_.  

But, dead or not, Harry _was_ there, and he didn’t move. He didn’t move, and Eggsy turned over, looked at him through half-open eyes, and lit up.

“Hey,” he said sleepily.

Harry was on the floor before he even processed the impulse, crouching by the bed with his face far too close to Eggsy’s. “You can see me?”

Eggsy just gazed at him blearily for a moment, and then his eyes cleared. He careened up into a sitting position, a profoundly stricken look on his face. “I can see you,” he said, not strictly as an answer. His elbows were propped on his knees, the heels of his palms pressing into his forehead as he kept shooting Harry wide-eyed looks, as if he would disappear again any second. “Is this what cracking up feels like?”

“I’m not sure I would know,” Harry replied, distantly pleased with his wry tone. He had come close a few times, he knew that much. Harry had never exactly expected pearly gates or a tunnel and a beautiful white light, but he could never have anticipated _this_ , and sometimes when he let himself truly process the fact that he was dead now _cracking up_ seemed like the only viable option.

Eggsy continued to peer at Harry through suspicious eyes for another moment, and then he moved. Harry clamped down on the instinct to dodge, and immediately regretted it, because Eggsy’s hand passed right through his face. It hurt more than Harry expected, to know that even if Eggsy could somehow see him he was not the exception to every rule. Worse still, Eggsy snatched his hand back like he had been burned, and that was the last thing Harry had wanted to live to see.  

_Live. Ha._

“Are you like a ghost?” Eggsy asked slowly.

Harry shrugged, a bit helplessly. “That’s my working theory, yes. No one has been able to see me or hear me. Until now, that is. I was… I was in Kentucky, and I made my way back here, primarily by boarding various public transportation vehicles without paying- distasteful, but under the circumstances unavoidable.”

Eggsy’s mouth quirked into a poor shadow of his usual humor as he asked, “Did you fly here then? In a plane, like?”

“Commercial,” Harry told him with a shudder.

Taking his unexpected physical changes in stride, Harry had initially attempted just to wish himself home from Kentucky- but when that failed he had indeed made his way back to the UK by surprisingly conventional means. He was on a plane when- as he had learned since- everyone started trying to kill each other. No one in the air was affected, which had been a blessing until they had to land. The whole mess was over by then- primarily thanks to Eggsy, he now understood- and Heathrow had rather made the church look like the aftermath of a paintball game. Harry tried not to remember that.

Eggsy’s smile grew a little wider, a little truer. “Poor baby,” he said. “But I meant, how come you didn’t just fall through the floor if you can’t touch nothing? How come you don’t fall through the floor right now?”

Harry looked at Eggsy for a beat, then two, and did exactly that.

He came back to himself up to his knees in the sitting room floor, righted himself, and made his way back up to his bedroom. Eggsy, still sitting up in the bed, looked relieved and then apologetic. Harry said, “I suspect it’s something to the effect of mind over matter. I believe that the floor will hold me- that it must- and it does.  Whenever I let myself consider that it shouldn't..."

"It don't anymore."

"Precisely." 

Eggsy bit his lip thoughtfully.  “What if you believed you could sit down?” Eggsy glanced around, seeming to register for the first time that it was Harry’s furniture, in Harry’s room in Harry’s house, that he was making so free with. He deflated slightly, but still patted the bed beside him. “Here.”

“It’s not so simple with something you’re asking me to do.”  

Eggsy rolled his eyes. “You’re Harry Hart. The bed will hold you. Why the fuck wouldn’t it?”

And as much as Harry wanted to protest, he knew that Eggsy wasn’t wrong. It should be able to hold him if the floor could. And if for some reason it didn’t, it wasn’t the end of the world- but it was so difficult not to obsess over the little things when they were all he had.

Harry thought about it some more. It occurred to him that boarding the plane, boarding a train, just standing on his bedroom floor- they were all about the destination. So he thought about sitting down, he thought about sitting down next to Eggsy so he could have a conversation with him like a normal person- and before he knew it he was perched quite comfortably on the side of the bed.

He hadn’t really thought much about whether he could _feel_ the world around him- had the fog been cold, had the rain been wet, had he been aware of central heating? None of those things had really registered. Eggsy, though- he felt like a furnace there beside Harry, and he beamed.

Harry looked away, blinking as though he’d been staring directly at the sun. “Not thinking about it seems to be the key,” he told Eggsy.

“So could you not think about touching me?”

Harry could sooner teleport himself to the moon right now and bring Eggsy back a souvenir than not think about touching Eggsy. Until that moment, he hadn’t really noticed that Eggsy was shirtless, and now he couldn’t stop. It should have been simple, to reach out and put his hand on a leanly muscled bicep and make Eggsy smile again- but even if Harry was alive it wouldn’t be simple. Desire, quite dormant since his death, flared, and- contrary to all logic- it felt just as it had before. Raging hot all over his skin and coiling unpleasantly in his belly as his fingers itched to trail across that too-smooth skin. It might start out innocent, but Harry couldn’t be sure it would end that way. Harry _wanted_ , nebulously but fiercely, and it was a blessing and a curse at once that there was nothing he could do about it.  

“Perhaps,” he said stiffly, but he didn’t reach out. He couldn’t touch Merlin, who he had known for years. He couldn’t touch anyone.  He changed the subject. “You’re taking this awfully well.”

Eggsy’s mouth quirked. “Well, as I see it, there’s two possibilities.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “You really are a ghost, or I’ve lost my marbles well and truly. And if it’s that last one, well… as far as seeing things that ain’t real go, it could be a lot worse. And if you’re a ghost, you’re- well, at least you’re here, yeah?” He moved to nudge Harry but mercifully course corrected at the last moment. “Reckon I can see dead people?”

Harry considered that. “I don’t know. I don’t know if there even _are_ dead people wandering around, as such. I haven’t seen any, and I would rather have expected to, after happened.” A lot of people died in that church, but he hadn’t seen any of them in the parking lot. And HQ could have been crawling with the spirits of fallen agents, but he hadn’t seen James Spencer or anyone else.  

“Dunno,” Eggsy said. “Maybe I have- maybe we both have- and just didn’t notice. Your head looks fine, and all.”          

Harry touched his temple reflexively and, indeed, found it unmarred. “Perhaps,” he agreed. He still thought Eggsy was taking this a little too well. For a young man who was either hallucinating or being haunted, he seemed rather sanguine about either prospect. And there was fact of Eggsy here, sleeping in Harry’s bed. And there was the way he had smiled, before he registered that he was not dreaming, as if it had been Harry he was hoping to see the whole time…

Inwardly, Harry cursed himself. Of course Eggsy had missed him. Of course Eggsy was happy to see him. He had been there when Eggsy had desperately needed someone, anyone, to believe in him. It was neither odd nor suggestive that Eggsy had become attached.

This was exactly why Harry had ultimately resolved not to regret all the opportunities he had missed with Eggsy when he realized he would never get out of Kentucky alive. It was better that Eggsy never know that Harry had failed at being a father figure so horribly, and in every possible way.

Eggsy said, “But it raises some questions, don’t it?”

“What questions?”

“Do we tell Merlin?”

“Tell Merlin,” Harry repeated, turning it over in his mind. After everything he had thought when he first arrived at headquarters, everything he had done over the last week hoping that Merlin would notice him, it was strange that those thoughts had gone right out of his head when he realized that Eggsy could see him. “How would you do that?”

“You mean without Merlin having me carted off to the psych ward?”

Harry nodded.  

“Dunno.” Eggsy looked thoughtful. “Merlin could hold up his fingers behind his back and you could tell me what they are.”

“Just Like Heaven,” Harry said.

“What now?”

Harry sighed. “That’s in a film. There are probably things that I could tell you, things that only Merlin and I know, but it’s hard to say if it’s worth the risk.” Very little in this world had ever meant more to Harry than his work, but keeping Eggsy from ending up in a straightjacket for trusting him was definitely one such thing.

“If what’s worth the risk?”

“Whatever I could do for Kingsman in my current… capacity.”

Eggsy nodded seriously. “Ghost missions. But I was thinking more about what Merlin could maybe do for you. He’s got loads of people working for him, right? Maybe they can figure out a way for you to communicate with people besides me. Or, I dunno, make you better somehow.”  

“I’m fairly certain that there is no better from dead.”

“I bet you was ‘fairly certain’ that there weren’t ghosts, either,” Eggsy reminded him. “And yet, here you are.”

Unfortunately, it was a good point. Harry fell silent.

“Time is it?” Eggsy asked, yawning.

“Four A.M.” Harry was a little startled. He had honestly forgotten about time entirely.

“Practically morning,” Eggsy said, and climbed out of bed. He was, mercifully, wearing pajama bottoms at least, and he crossed to the closet, pulling on Harry’s robe before freezing, and turning back to him. “Oh,” he said. “Uh.”

“It’s quite all right,” Harry told him. He already felt far too proprietary of Eggsy without him wearing Harry’s clothes, but his desire for Eggsy’s chest and perfectly formed limbs to be covered overrode his discomfort with the situation and his certainty that something painfully obvious was passing just beyond his notice.

Now at least somewhat clothed, Eggsy went down to the kitchen and Harry followed him. Eggsy started a pot of coffee and some toast, pausing to ask, “Do you eat?”

“I think not,” Harry said. “I don’t get hungry, at any rate, and I highly doubt forcing it would be a very good idea.”

“I get you,” Eggsy said, and returned to preparing food for one.

Eggsy was obviously very comfortable- _worryingly_ comfortable- in his kitchen. Harry hesitated but made himself speak. “Eggsy… no judgment, but- you _do_ have a home?”

“’Course I do,” Eggsy replied. “Set Mum and Daisy up right and proper, I did. I just… I can’t sleep. I keep ending up here.”

 _And then you can sleep. In my bed._ Harry locked his jaw around that remark and nodded.

Once Eggsy had his coffee and toast together, they sat down at the table. It took only a moment or two for Harry to get into the right headspace to do so without falling to the floor, and Eggsy looked so terribly proud. Harry had to look away again.

“Can you move my cup?” Eggsy asked while Harry was still inspecting the grain of the table.

Harry reached out and tried to lift in the conventional fashion. His hand passed right through. On a whim, he tried moving it with his mind. Nothing.

“It’s okay,” Eggsy said like he really believed that. “We’ll figure this out.”  

“Yes,” Harry agreed, and cleared his throat. He shouldn’t have found it so comforting- Eggsy trying to be strong for him. “We should come up with a plan. For Merlin.”    

*   *   *

Harry chose the anecdote to tell Eggsy well, that much was clear.

Eggsy striding into his office saying, “I got something to tell you, and you hafta listen to me all the way through and not think I’m crazy,” would have given lesser men pause, but Merlin merely blinked once, gestured for Eggsy to sit down, and waited patiently for him to continue.

“Okay,” Eggsy said, crossing and uncrossing his legs a few times. “So. Barbados, right?”

The story itself was different in Eggsy’s scattered, somewhat bombastic style- but he had listened to Harry well, picking up all the little details that made it so unmistakable, and by the time Eggsy got to the bit with the fisherman’s wife, Merlin was white as a sheet. But he let Eggsy finish, probably to make sure that all the details of the one mission about which Harry had utterly and enthusiastically lied on every report he had ever written were accounted for. In pieces, there were probably individual anecdotes that others knew- that mission, one of the few Harry and Merlin had shared, had been a disaster from start to finish, and one of the perks of surviving a thing like that was being able to tell people about it- but only the two of them knew _everything_ , and Harry had been very thorough.

“All right,” Merlin said when Eggsy was finished. “How do you know all that?”

“Harry told me. And he told me so that you would know that whatever I said next was the truth.”

Harry lingered on the sidelines, torn between rolling his eyes and utterly appreciating Eggsy’s use of drama.

Merlin nodded tightly. “And what is that?”

“That Harry told me all that this morning.”

Merlin swore. Loudly. “If that bastard has been alive all this time, I swear to all that is holy I will make him regret it.”

Harry was a little surprised. He hadn’t suspected that Merlin would feel so strongly on the subject.

Eggsy winced. “Alive might be pushing the definition.”

Merlin either didn’t understand what Eggsy meant by that or simply chose to ignore it. He said, “Where is he?”

Eggsy pointed at Harry. “Right there.”

Merlin looked, eyes sliding right over Harry as they always had, but though his expression was doubtful, he kept looking. “Can he get behind me?” he asked.

“He is now,” Eggsy reported once Harry was.

“How many fingers am I holding up?” Merlin asked. Behind his back, Harry could see three. He told Eggsy as much, and Eggsy in turn told Merlin. Now five. Now-

“He’s flipping me off.”

“You’re flipping him off?”

“This really is just like that film,” Harry said.

“What film?” Eggsy asked, beginning to sound a little annoyed.

“All right,” Merlin said quickly. “I believe you.” He looked from Eggsy to where he evidently assumed Harry was standing and said, “We’ll figure this out.”

“What’s to figure out exactly?” Eggsy asked, probably more for Harry’s benefit than his own.

“If there’s anything we can do about... how he is.” Merlin looked thoughtful. “Can he write something down?” Merlin cast about for a pen and paper.

“Doubt it,” Eggsy told him. “Things, people, they just pass right through him. He can stand on the floor, though, and we’ve worked up to sitting in chairs.” He sounded so pleased with himself that Harry gave him a dirty look. Eggsy just smiled brightly. Harry got the message: until he could speak to Merlin on his own, provided that was even possible, this was going to be Eggsy’s show.

“Well,” Merlin sighed. “We’ll start small, then.” He attempted to look directly at Harry again.

Smilingly kindly, Eggsy reached out and pointed Merlin’s head in the right direction.

*   *   *

The efforts of Merlin’s division to ‘help' him did not give Harry confidence.

They sat him down, relying heavily on Eggsy's assurances that he was in fact there, and set about scanning him with every device currently in their possession.  Merlin hadn't been able to spare too many people for the project, and Nimue, the young lady Merlin had put in charge of the operation, had been mainly deemed qualified for the position because she watched a lot of Ghost Hunters. 

After about an hour, Merlin descended and informed his team that they were depending too much on Eggsy’s input to so much as find Harry, and convinced Eggsy to take a trip to the kitchens and get himself some tea. 

Once Eggsy was gone, the ‘tests’ went from laughable to unendurable.  By the time he returned Harry had gone incorporeal again and fallen through his chair three times and the floor once, unsuccessfully attempted to throw a pair of prototype glasses at Merlin’s head, and spent ten minutes watching a pair of junior techs insist that they were getting very strong electromagnetic readings from a flower pot halfway across the room from where Harry was actually standing. 

Eggsy took all of this in from the doorway and valiantly did not smile.  When no one was looking at him he jerked his head in the direction of the hall, wordlessly asking Harry to follow him out.

Harry went, idly wondering if they would ever even realize that he wasn’t there anymore.

They found a bench out in a secluded part of the gardens.  All the way there, Eggsy had been laughing softly, his head angled down. Harry had forgotten what a lovely sight that was.

Questions still preyed on his mind- why was he here, why was Eggsy the only one who could see him, and why did he feel so much more connected to the world when Eggsy was around?- but it was easier to let them be, for a while, when Eggsy had that look on his face.

“It could be worse,” he said, trying to smile.

Eggsy glanced Harry’s way and his eyes went soft. “You didn’t seem to think so.”

“Well. They a _re_ doing their best. It isn’t their fault that they don’t even know where to begin. I just needed a little break from feeling so… ineffectual.”

“You ain't-”

“I can’t _do_ anything, Eggsy.” All too quickly, Harry was getting frustrated again. “Sitting on this bench is the pinnacle of my abilities at the moment, and when you’re gone I can’t communicate at all.”  

“Then I won’t let Merlin chase me off again, will I?”

“Eggsy-”

“That’s it, I just fucking won’t leave you alone.” Eggsy’s eyes were, briefly, steel. “Not _again_ , Harry.”

And Harry got the impression that Eggsy was referring to more than just his little trip the kitchens while Merlin’s people ran their pointless tests. He frowned.

Eggsy leaned close, his face still serious. “You really gotta at least try, you know.”

“Try what?”

“To touch me. Just so we know, either way.”  

Harry’s gut twisted. The fact that Eggsy’s suggestion was imminently reasonable just made Harry feel sicker, because he suddenly didn’t want to know. While they were sure that Eggsy couldn’t reach out and touch Harry, they didn’t actually know that Harry couldn’t touch Eggsy. Using this second chance to be close to Eggsy- and, if necessary, part with him on better terms- would be one thing. But if it turned out that Eggsy was the only person Harry could touch, no one would blame him if he grew desperate for that contact- certainly not Eggsy- and it would become far too easy to abuse. Already he was aching for it, to run his fingers through that hair, to kiss those lips, that neck, to-

No. As it currently stood, it was easy enough to kill such thoughts in their infancy- but if he could touch Eggsy, it would become all he could think about. And yet if he knew for sure that however long he lived- such as he did live at the moment- he could never touch Eggsy again, it would hurt far more than it had any right to. It would be a constant reminder of how very foolish, weak, and _dead_ he was that he did not require.    

He’d handled the situation with reasonable grace thus far, but if he thought too much about it he might still go mad.

“Just try, Harry,” Eggsy pressed in a soft voice. “How complicated could it be?”

“Very,” Harry snapped, and reached for him. He wasn’t sure what he was reaching for, exactly, and it didn’t matter anyway as Harry’s hand passed right through Eggsy’s collarbone. “There,” he said, drawing his hand back. He was sorry, suddenly- sorry it had happened at all, and sorrier it had happened like that. “Are you happy now?”

“Sure,” Eggsy said, emphatically not.

Harry felt a strange lightness at the question being answered once and for all, and he couldn’t tell if the feeling was relief or regret.  

Possibly, it was both at once. If anyone could manage that, Harry supposed it would be him.

More subdued now, Eggsy finished his tea in silence.

“Well,” Harry began awkwardly. “We’d better get back. And while we’re there you might ask Merlin to get you a headset or the like. Something bulky. Obvious.”

“Why?” Eggsy asked, blinking.

“So that people passing by will think you’re on the phone, of course,” Harry replied. A tech Harry recognized only in passing was walking by and doing her level best not to stare at Eggsy.

Though his eyes were still sad, Eggsy started to laugh again.

*   *   *

Harry found his tolerance for the second round of testing and spent the rest of the day patiently allowing everything Nimue and the others could think of doing. It was several hours before anyone even came up with a scan that detected anything at all when pointed in Harry’s direction, but they did eventually manage it, leaving Harry to conclude that maybe they had some idea of what they were doing after all.

When they left in the evening, Eggsy had a bulky headset attached to his ear and an almost-genuine smile on his face, and though the readings they had taken meant little Harry Nimue insisted that she had learned much from them.

Accordingly, Harry decided to consider the day productively spent.  

Roxy- Lancelot, just back from a mission Harry had heard some of Merlin’s people talking about, one that had apparently been a great success- intercepted them near the bullet train.  She looked good, like she'd really come into her own after V-Day.  Harry was happy for her, distantly, but he hadn't exactly known her well, or at all- it was Eggsy she was there to see, Eggsy she grabbed by the arm and drew close.

"Did I hear right?" she demanded. 

“Dunno,” Eggsy replied. “What did you hear?”

Thinking about it, Harry stopped short. Despite his lack of official title, Eggsy did technically have a job, one that babysitting Harry all day had kept him from. He had friends and colleagues and his family, and he hadn’t said a word to any of them since Harry had appeared. Harry had, foolishly, forgotten that.

Eggsy stopped too, practically ignoring Roxy in favor of staying as close to Harry as he could without touching him, rather proving Harry's concerns founded. “What’s the matter, Harry?”

Roxy followed his gaze into thin air and said, “I did hear right.”

“It’s nothing,” Harry managed to tell Eggsy, shaking his head and backing away. “You should talk to your friend, Eggsy, I’ll give you some room.”

“Where are you gonna go?” Eggsy looked worried.

“I’ll wait for you at home,” Harry told him, and swept away in the direction of home before Eggsy could protest- which Harry was sure he would, considering the conversation they'd had on the subject- and before he could convince himself that it was a monumentally bad idea.

*   *   *

It had taken less than twenty-four hours for Harry to forget what it was actually like when Eggsy wasn’t around.

He couldn’t eat, he couldn’t drink, and though he supposed it was possible that he could read a book or the paper, he doubted he would have much success even lifting one. Without Eggsy’s infectious optimism, it was difficult to believe it was worth even trying.

Harry had never thought much about the existence of an afterlife, but now that he was, somehow, still here he had to wonder- was he meant to be trying to move on? _Was_ there in fact a light somewhere that he had failed to walk toward? An opportunity to leave this existence in a graceful manner that he was botching by clinging so desperately to life?

No- not to life, to Eggsy. Harry wanted to stay, to work, to be useful again- but it was only around Eggsy that it even seemed possible.    

So if when he heard a key in the door Harry moved just a little faster to greet Eggsy than was strictly dignified, it wasn’t all that strange, was it?

“I had wondered how you’d gotten in,” Harry remarked as Eggsy set down his spare key.

Eggsy shrugged. “I did break in the first time,” he admitted. “I’m actually really surprised I didn’t get arrested. But then I found the spare key.”

Harry smiled at Eggsy; he couldn’t have stopped himself if he'd wanted to. Even without the whole messy question of whether Eggsy would become a Kingsman, whether Harry would be here to see it, whether he could- or should- stay, Harry couldn't change how Eggsy made him feel. 

Eggsy smiled back a little uncertainly. “Wasn’t sure I should come here,” he said, hovering in the hall and shifting back and forth on his feet. He still had his coat and shoes on. “But I had to check in on you, and you said-”

Harry’s heart clenched in his chest and he hardly spared a thought for why that was even possible.  “Eggsy, if you don’t want to be here-”

“No, it ain’t that,” Eggsy said quickly.  “I just- this is _your_ house, and I-”    

“And you are welcome in it,” Harry told him firmly.  If he wanted to guarantee that Eggsy stayed, all Harry had to do was explain how he felt when Eggsy wasn’t with him, but Harry didn’t want Eggsy to feel that he had to stay- which he undoubtedly would if Harry admitted that when they were apart he sometimes felt like he was disappearing.  That, combined with a spy’s natural disinclination to appear weak when he was exactly that, kept Harry from saying more on the subject. “Come inside. Have something to eat if, there is anything.”  

Something in Eggsy’s shoulders relaxed. He took off his coat and toed off his shoes and followed Harry through to the kitchen.

There was indeed food, as Harry discovered when Eggsy opened the fridge. Eggsy produced some bread- bread that Harry would never purchased for himself- and found some sliced meat and something to spread on it.  

Harry stated the obvious, something he should have seen that morning but hadn’t: “You shopped.”

“I been here quite a bit,” Eggsy explained, shrugging one shoulder. “And anyway it seemed… better. Food in the fridge, nothing gathering dust. Made it more like you’d be back any day now.” Eggsy swiped his knife over the bread with a little more aggression than was strictly necessary, but his voice was very even. “You said you’d come back and sort things. But you didn’t.”  

“No,” Harry said softly. Apologetically.

“You really had me thinking you was the one person who wasn’t gonna bail on me.” Eggsy took his meal- such as it was- to the table and sat down. “And I know it ain’t right, to blame you for dying like you done it on purpose to let me down, but still. It messed me up.” Eggsy took a bite and immediately looked as though he was going to choke on it. He slumped back in his chair.

Harry crouched down on the floor in front of Eggsy’s chair instead of sitting down himself because he didn’t trust himself to say what he needed to say, and say it right, _and_ keep from falling right through the floor at the same time.

Eggsy’s expression went a bit strange; his eyes widened as he looked down at Harry below him, but he swallowed and obediently held Harry’s gaze.

“I was too hard on you,” Harry said. “And I’m sorry for it. But I didn’t need to sort anything, as it turns out. You did admirably on your own.”

Eggsy’s tiny smile was somehow lovelier than when he beamed outright.

“And I’m back now. So. Finish eating, and get some rest, and then tomorrow we will talk about getting you an actual balanced meal, and then check with Merlin about his progress. Yes?”

Eggsy nodded, that strange but sweet light still in his eyes, and he began to eat with a little more gusto.

When he was finished, Eggsy carefully washed his plate- which Harry could see he had been doing every time he ate here- and turned back to Harry. “Suppose you don’t want me to stay here like I been, though,” he said, as if picking up in the middle of a conversation Harry hadn’t thus far been privy to.

“Not on my account,” Harry replied, because as much as he thought Eggsy should probably go Harry desperately wanted him to stay. And if Eggsy _also_ wanted to stay…

Eggsy hesitated. “Spare bedroom?”

And Harry wouldn’t pretend to understand why Eggsy had gone anywhere else in the first place, but he repeated, “Not on my account.”

Eggsy caught his lower lip between his teeth.

“I don’t exactly sleep,” Harry explained. “So. It’s up to you.”

It was relatively clear to Harry that Eggsy didn’t want to talk about why he was disinclined to sleep in the spare room, but he supposed it wasn’t unreasonable if- after everything- Eggsy wanted to keep him in view as much as he wanted to be kept in view. So he was only half surprised when Eggsy went upstairs without another word and straight into Harry’s room.

Eggsy slipped into the bathroom, and Harry heard the shower start. He sat on the edge of the bed as he had only the night before, concentrating on keeping himself present and not thinking about Eggsy naked with only a thin wall between them.

Time slipped away from Harry, and before long the shower ceased. He heard the toilet and then the sink and then Eggsy came out, in pajama bottoms again but with a t-shirt too this time- presumably for Harry’s benefit, not that Harry had any intention of admitting how grateful for that he actually was.

Eggsy still looked far too beautiful. Harry had to look away.

He heard Eggsy clear his throat. “If you don’t sleep- would you mind staying? Uh- for a bit?”

In truth, Harry had half meant to already. “If you wish.”

Harry glanced in Eggsy’s direction, watched him rub the back of his neck and worry at his bottom lip again. “Do you have a side, you know?” He pointed to the bed.

“I was never particular.”

Eggsy nodded, and lay down where Harry had found him the night before. Harry stretched out on the bed beside him. Their arms were close enough that they would brush, if that was possible. Eggsy turned onto his side to look at Harry.

“You just gonna stay like that?” Eggsy's eyes raked down Harry’s body.

It took Harry a second to work out what he meant. He was wearing the suit he died in; he had been the whole time. He shrugged. “It doesn’t appear to wrinkle,” he said. As far as he knew, it wasn’t a real suit, but he didn’t say that, because he was hardly more real than it was.

Eggsy shrugged himself and his eyes drifted closed.

Harry stared up at the ceiling and listened to Eggsy breathe, waiting.

He hadn’t lied to Eggsy; he really didn’t sleep as such. But there was a darkness that slipped in when he was alone and not concentrating on anything in particular. In the darkness, time slipped away from Harry- hours, even days sometimes. There was something about that darkness- the pure nothingness of it- that scared him as much as anything ever had. 

But he lay there next to Eggsy, and the darkness didn’t come. He simply closed his eyes, and then there was morning light streaming in through window and hair tickling his noise.

Harry opened his eyes, and for a second it was as though he existed outside himself as he processed Eggsy wrapped securely in his arms. Eggsy’s cheek was pillowed on Harry’s chest, his hands tucked up against Harry, and Harry was holding him back as tightly as sleep had allowed. Eggsy was always so fiery, all warmth and anger, and yet he seemed oddly vulnerable in that moment, as though he needed to be held and shielded. As though he _wanted_ to be.  

As firmly as he could, Harry quashed that thought.

“Ooof,” Eggsy said sleepily, as he fell face first into the pillow underneath Harry’s head.

Between them, they managed to separate with admirable quickness. Half on his knees to one side of the bed, Eggsy said triumphantly, “I _knew_ you could touch me if you didn’t think about it.”

And he was right, and Harry would be lucky if he ever stopped thinking about it again, what it was like to hold Eggsy.

His stomach dropped and so did he.

Harry managed to get a hold of himself before he fell through the floor, and he just stayed there under the bed for a while. When he felt like he could look at Eggsy without spiraling, he rolled out. Eggsy, leaning over the side of the bed, peered down at him. He wasn’t smiling, but his amusement was still all too clear.

“Breakfast?” he asked.

Harry nodded wearily. “Breakfast.”

*   *   *

Eggsy looked at most of Harry’s cookbooks as though they were written in hieroglyphics, but he still jumped into Harry’s proposed task with aplomb. Eggsy had indeed bought vegetables, although possibly less out of personal interest in them than the assumption that they were the kind of thing that Harry ought to have. Indeed, the entire kitchen was almost alarmingly well stocked, but Harry chose not to remark on it. How Eggsy spent his new paycheck was not for him to monitor.  

A little reluctantly, Eggsy picked out a recipe for an omelet with vegetable filling, his nose crinkling. “Over-complicated, ain’t it?” he asked, assumedly rhetorically. “Did you really cook like this?”

“When I had the time, yes.”

“When you were alone?”

Harry blinked. “Well, yes- I… often was.” Something odd happened on Eggsy’s face. Harry looked down at the book instead of at Eggsy and focused on his original implication: “Just because a person is cooking for one doesn’t mean civilization should go out the window.”

Eggsy snorted, then smiled, then started setting out the necessary items.  There was something about the deep fondness in his expression that scared Harry as much as it warmed him, but he wasn’t as rattled as he had been earlier.  Consequently, when Eggsy said, "Make yourself useful," and pressed a hunk of cheese and a grater into Harry's hands, he thought nothing of it.

He was halfway through his prescribed task when he realized what was odd about it.  He cast a look in Eggsy's direction and noticed Eggsy watching him out of the corner of his eye with a sly smile on his face.  There was a moment when Harry almost lost control again, but then he just... didn't.  He smiled at Eggsy and kept grating.   

At this rate, Harry thought that he might actually be able to pick up a pen and write Merlin a message sometime soon- but it was just a casual, offhanded thought. He didn’t want to rush through the morning, and not just because Eggsy desperately needed to eat properly. It was so unexpectedly easy, helping Eggsy cook, and they fell as smoothly into step with each other as Harry could ever have hoped they might.    

But then Eggsy moved out of Harry’s way to avoid brushing against him- or rather through him, since that was probably what Eggsy was actually afraid of- and his hip caught the edge of a frying pan.

Harry caught it without thinking- caught it and held it.

Which was all well and good, except for the way Eggsy was staring at him. Eggsy didn’t quite look scared, not exactly, but he certainly looked wary, uncertain. He looked like he could easily become scared under the right circumstances.

He pointed. “Does that hurt?”

Harry looked down and realized that he was gripping the pan by the edge, fingers brushing over the bottom where it should have been frighteningly hot and no, it didn’t hurt. Not at all. He set the pan back on the stove and turned off the burner, suspecting that this was something they were going to have to talk about extensively.

The moment Harry’s hand was free, Eggsy grabbed it. Grabbed it and held it, looking carefully at the palm and fingers for any sign of a burn. There wasn’t one, of course, but that didn’t keep Eggsy’s touch from lingering. It made Harry uneasy, the way Eggsy was holding on to him like that, like-

Like he couldn’t be.

Harry’s hand slipped straight through Eggsy’s fingers.  

Eggsy’s jaw worked briefly, and then he let out a long breath- more a sigh than anything. “Well, I guess we got one more thing to tell Merlin."

“What’s that?” Harry asked distantly. Eggsy’s hands had been so warm. Echoes of that heat still tingled on his palm.

“That you can’t feel nothing.”

And Harry made a noise that he hoped Eggsy would interpret as agreement, because the problem was that he _could_. He might not have noticed the pan second ago, but the feeling of Eggsy’s fingers cradling his own could not have been clearer. And he had felt Eggsy in his arms this morning, had felt him whenever he was close enough from the very start.

Harry had, he realized now, misunderstood something vital about his situation. He had assumed that it would be easy enough to forget whether or not he had experienced everyday sensations like the wind on his face, and concluded that how strongly Eggsy’s presence resonated in his very bones meant little because he had always been more aware of Eggsy than he had any right to be. But clearly he had been wrong- and if he was right now and Eggsy was in fact the only person he could feel, it meant something. It meant that he was even more tied to Eggsy than he had thought.

Before all this happened, if you had asked Harry why he thought the spirit of a dead man might remain in the world, he would have laughed it off. But if pressed for a hypothetical, he would most likely have guessed that it was a question of unfinished business or, failing that, the chance to have some final wish fulfilled.  That was certainly the popular reasoning. 

And there had been that moment- brief as it had been, Harry recalled it very vividly- when he knew he was going to die and all he had been able to think about was seeing Eggsy again, making things right with him somehow. And now he had that chance, but he had no idea how much or how little he ought to do with it. The look on Eggsy’s face when he had grabbed Harry’s hand to check if he was hurt might as well have been branded on the inside of Harry’s eyelids. It was so frightened and desperate. And the way Eggsy had said that he wouldn’t leave Harry alone again before Harry had taken the choice away from him…

More than he was afraid of anything- including his own death- Harry was afraid that he would end up hurting Eggsy more for having come back than he would have if he just stayed gone.  

Harry wished he could talk to Merlin. If he could, he would tell Merlin that Eggsy was the only one he could feel. He would tell Merlin about the nothingness he sometimes experienced, and about his doubts that they were doing the right thing in trying so hard to keep him here. He would tell Merlin how sure he felt, suddenly, that he had made a terrible mistake contacting the living at all.

But right now he could only really speak through Eggsy, and he didn’t want Eggsy to know any of that, so he just nodded his head.

Eggsy took a deep breath and went back to cooking.

*   *   *

In the aftermath of what Harry had decided to think of as the breakfast incident, he suffered a bit of a relapse. By the time they reached headquarters, Harry couldn’t even sit in a chair anymore, and he kept falling through the floor, and Eggsy had this scared, helpless look on his face that was horrible to witness.

Suffice it to say, it wasn’t a good day for anyone. But over the course of it Harry developed a new appreciation for the efforts of Merlin’s people. Even if they had no idea what they were doing, they still never gave up, and things eventually got better.

Hours turned into days and then into weeks. Nimue rigged a device that clearly and definitely picked Harry up when it was waved in his direction, and the sense of relief through Merlin’s division was palpable. Harry was proud of them- easily as proud as he was disappointed in himself. If he just once been able to lift up an object in front of them as he could with Eggsy, this wouldn’t have seemed like such an immense accomplishment. As it was, it was the most concrete proof they had as yet gotten of his existence- and it gave them, at last, a way to make sure that he hadn’t slipped through the floor in the middle of their tests without anyone realizing it.

It was fully a week after the breakfast incident before Harry finally managed to convince Eggsy to start leaving him alone with Merlin’s people again, but after that they developed a routine.

Merlin’s people would run tests on Harry and make note of their results, and Eggsy would do whatever Merlin had him doing- training the newest batch of recruits, most often- until the end of the day, at which point he and Harry would go home together. Eggsy would call his mother or a friend if Harry pressed him, but he wouldn’t leave Harry alone again to go see them at any price. They would make dinner together, play a game or perhaps see a film, and then they would go to bed. Harry would drift off- but not into that same horrible nothingness- and wake up with Eggsy in his arms. They wouldn’t talk about it. They would get up, make breakfast, go into HQ, and start it all over again.    

It wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but Harry still found himself becoming complacent. In hindsight, he really should have taken that as a sign of what was to come.  

*   *   *

What happened? Roxy Morton. Lancelot.

She arrived in the tech division one day shortly after lunch and convinced Nimue and the others to give her a moment alone with Harry. Nimue pressed the Harry-detector into her hand and departed, and then Roxy waved it around until she zeroed into Harry’s location. She was better at it than most; when she was ready she looked Harry square in the eye.

“Hello,” she said. “You don’t really know me, but Eggsy talks about you a great deal, so I feel like I know you. And though I can’t know what this is like for you, I think I can imagine.”

Harry couldn’t speak to her, but even if he could he wouldn’t disagree. He had had a natural bias toward his own candidate, but that didn’t mean Roxy hadn’t impressed him. She was logical, talented, unflinching- she deserved to be Lancelot and she deserved his respect. He waited for her to continue.

“You love what you do, so since you’re still here you’d like to find a way to do it again. And you don’t exactly want to die. But you can’t help asking yourself if you really belong here. Only one person can see you or hear you, and you keep wondering if even that’s a mistake. If maybe there’s some natural process to this that you fucked up somehow because he saw you. If maybe if you’re away from the one thing that connects you to this world for too long, you’ll just-"

“Fade away,” he murmured, even as she said the same thing.  

“At any rate, you're in this world and you feel you should do everything you can to stay it in it. And you will. But.”  

“But?” he prompted, even though she couldn’t hear him.

She sighed. “But you must be enough of a pragmatist to know that everything Nimue does, everything you do, might not matter in the end. This isn’t the natural order of things, and nature might try to correct itself. You may never have any more effect on this world than you do right now. You may disappear altogether. You have to be ready for that possibility- but more importantly, you have to help Eggsy be ready for that possibility.  I was there after you died, you know. He hid it well enough, but… it changed him. And now that you’re here… He needs to see you all the time as much as you need to be seen. So I’m not saying that you’ve been… selfish, although I think you probably think you have. But here’s the thing: Kingsman is spread very thin right now. I’m hardly ever back in England, and Merlin needs Eggsy in the field even if he isn’t a knight yet officially. But Merlin won’t just send him and Eggsy won’t volunteer, because he’s staying with _you_. He won’t leave unless you push him to go, and he needs to go if he’s going to have a future here. Maybe you’ll get... better somehow, maybe that's where this is all heading, but if you don’t, and you want him to be more to this organization than your nursemaid while they try to figure out if their best agent can ever be of use to them again, he needs to start working. Now.”  She took a breath, nodded once in the direction where she knew he was standing, and set a file folder on the table beside him. "Thank you for listening," she said.  And then she turned smartly on her heel and left. 

Harry reached out and picked up the folder- because he had to and he wouldn’t settle for anything else after what just happened. It was a mission dossier, starting in three days time, and it was perfect for Eggsy, but Roxy was right- no one would just volunteer Eggsy and he wouldn’t volunteer himself.

Which meant that Harry had three days to make Eggsy decide to leave him.

A career spent tricking or otherwise manipulating people into doing things they didn’t actually want to do made Harry’s first thought that he should find a way to… alienate Eggsy somehow, make him want to walk away from Harry because he was too angry to stay. But if Harry knew nothing else about Eggsy, he knew how stubborn he could be. And though Harry knew that there were things, things he could do that would permanently tarnish him in his protégée’s eyes, he also knew what a tight rope he would have to walk. He would probably get only one chance to pick the right thing, and if he failed he would just bind Eggsy even more tightly to him.

No. That was not a viable option.

That left one other path readily obvious to Harry: he could convince Eggsy that he didn’t actually need him anymore. And if, in the process, he did in fact also cease to need Eggsy, that would progress in the right direction, wouldn’t it?

So when Nimue returned to her office a few minutes later, saw what appeared to be a file folder floating in midair, and shrieked, Harry considered that a step in the right direction.

*   *   *

“I apologize,” Nimue said later. “For my… reaction. It was unprofessional. I just… I suppose there was always one part of me that thought this was one of Merlin’s tests. You know, ‘a coworker has become a ghost. Analyze.’ Doesn’t sound completely real, does it?”

“Of course not,” Harry wrote on the sheet of paper she passed to him. “If it hadn’t happened to me, I wouldn’t believe it either.”

She smiled at him, or tried to. Her gaze was still fixed just slightly to the side of his head, but he felt more connected to her than ever before. He realized that he hadn’t properly looked at her in far too long, and that she looked harried and unsure.

“You’ve done good work,” he wrote.

“You too,” she replied, and then flushed- probably as she remembered how much he outranked her.

“Thank you.” It was true, after all. It had taken him three tries to grab the pen, but since it was the first time that he had gripped anything at all without Eggsy either tricking or encouraging him, it was good progress.  

“Why…” Nimue cleared her throat, hesitated, evidently torn between a question she felt she should ask and her disinclination to ask it- probably, again, because he was a superior, and even dead he could probably make life difficult for her. “Why do you think you couldn’t do this before?”

“Because I didn’t think I could, I suppose.”

She nodded, and under the circumstances it must have made as much sense to her as anything did. “And can you touch me?” she asked, reaching out a hand.

Harry reached back, or tried to. He passed right through her.

“Hmm,” she said.

He wondered why human contact was such a hang-up for him. Touching her hand should have been no different than picking up the pen, but for some reason it eluded him despite his determination.

“I did feel something,” Nimue told him. “I’m not sure if that’s a new development.”

“What did you feel?” he wrote.

“It’s a little hard to describe, but definitely not cold or any of the other… ghost clichés. Just kind of a… tingling sensation. Like there was something slightly different about the air right there.”

“That’s something, I suppose.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “I’m going to go and write some of this down, if that’s all right.”

“Of course.”

“Is there anything more I can do for you at the moment?”

“Send Merlin down when he has a minute.”

“All right,” she said, and smiled once more before she left.

*   *   *

Because Lancelot hadn't exaggerated when she said that the organization was run ragged, it took Merlin several hours to make the promised appearance.

By then, Harry was bored. On one of the desks- not Nimue’s- he found a book of philosophical essays that turned out to be a romance novel under the cover. It was so good to read again that Harry hardly cared about the subject matter.

Merlin lingered in the doorway, taking in the book if not Harry, and said, “Oh thank God.”

“Nimue thought that you might have been making this up as a test,” Harry wrote. “Who did you think was testing you?” He held up the paper for Merlin to read.

Merlin shrugged. “I didn’t really think it wasn’t true. Eggsy’s stories were… difficult to doubt. That doesn’t make this any less insane. Because it is more insane than usual, even for us.”

“I can’t argue,” Harry wrote.

Merlin smiled, slow at first- like it had been a long time and he was rusty at it. He asked, “What did you want?”

“Lancelot came to see me.” Harry passed the folder she gave him to Merlin.

“Ah,” Merlin said. “I wondered where that went.”

“Don’t even think about punishing her,” Harry wrote.

“Of course I won’t,” Merlin sniffed, sounding offended by the very idea. “Stealing from me is damned impressive.”

Harry laughed. Even if Merlin couldn’t hear it, this felt good, felt like progress.

Merlin perused the folder for a while. “What about this has you so interested?”

“You should send Eggsy.”

“Ah.” Merlin was silent for a while. “That’s why the sudden jump in activity. You’re pushing him out of the nest.”

The metaphor was uncomfortable, but not unapt. Harry knew, from everything he had heard when he first came back, how well Eggsy had handled himself without Harry. It was natural for Eggsy to want to cling to his mentor, especially with the world falling down around him, but Harry was holding him back, and the sooner he stopped, the better it would be for both of them.

Merlin’s words made Harry wonder something. “Do you think I could have done this before and I just… subconsciously didn’t want to?”

“The thing about the subconscious is that it’s hard to say. But we both know that there’s a whole realm of possibility that opens up when ‘want to’ becomes ‘have to’. I’m actually not surprised that this is what it took.”

“Why?”

“Anyone can see that you’re dotty about the boy,” Merlin said. “But even if you weren’t I know you’d hate to leave him worse off for your coming back if this turns out not to be permanent- which I hope it doesn’t, in case you doubted that.”

“When you say ‘anyone can see’ it-” Harry started to write.

“Not Eggsy, obviously,” Merlin replied. “He probably thinks that’s just your face.”

“What’s my face?”

“All gooey around the edges. It’s disgusting.” The immense fondness in Merlin’s voice made it clear that he didn’t really think it was- which baffled Harry more than a little, because he felt like his gut fell right through to the basement when Merlin mentioned knowing how Harry felt about Eggsy in the same conversation that he had likened him to a parent. That was the crux of the matter, and it _was_ disgusting. But Harry knew he shouldn’t really be surprised. Merlin had talked in the ears and seen through the eyes of agents doing all manner of depraved things for two decades. Merlin was impossible to shock.

It took Harry a long time to decide what to tell Merlin next. “Just bring it up with him.”

“I’m not sure he’ll be too keen.”

“Lay the groundwork, Merlin. I’ll do the rest.”

*   *   *

That, unfortunately, turned out to be easier said than done.

There was one thing Harry hadn’t thought of, which wasn’t unreasonable because it hadn’t been an issue before: all that interacting with the world appeared to have drained him of energy- a lot of energy. It didn’t manifest in any of the expected- well, human- ways. In fact, he hardly noticed it at all until he heard Eggsy calling his name and discovered Eggsy standing very close to him- and Harry simply couldn't remember him coming into the room or approaching him.

Eggsy had his hand on Harry's arm- or rather, hovering roughly where Harry's arm would have been, had he been solid at all. 

Harry stumbled and slipped up to his knee into the floor before he got himself together again. “What did that look like to you?” he asked. From Eggsy’s pallor and the wideness of his eyes, it hadn’t been good.

“You were kind of… flickering. There were moments when I couldn’t even see you anymore.”

Harry cursed himself roundly. If all his progress had been erased by this- and given the way Eggsy was looking at him now, that certainly seemed likely- he might never be able to convince Eggsy to leave. Still, he had to at least try to do as he’d planned.

He glanced at the clock. Three hours had passed since he talked to Merlin himself, which made it likely that Eggsy had seen him too.

“Yeah,” Eggsy said warily when Harry asked. “Just left him.”

“And?”

“He was… talking about a mission.” From the way Eggsy practically scoffed when he said it, it was clear that he didn’t think it a viable option.

“Then you should consider it,” Harry said.

“With you like this?”

“Disregarding me for a moment, things are bad right now, and every able bodied agent here ought to be out there doing their part.” Harry found it surprisingly easy to slip back into playing teacher. “And yes, I know that at the moment you aren’t an agent, but this would be the perfect step toward becoming one.”

For a moment, Eggsy looked tempted, then- “But I ain’t. Disregarding you.”

“No,” Harry sighed. “I suppose not. Did Merlin give you a deadline?”

“He wants an answer by the day after tomorrow.”

“Well then. I suppose we have until the day after tomorrow to see if it’s even possible, don’t we?”

*   *   *

Harry was resolved to make it possible, absolutely, but practicality did win out. As much as he wanted to be independent from Eggsy- so that Eggsy could be independent from _him_ \- he had learned that rushing things would not ultimately work in his favor.

So when Nimue came back, he had Eggsy tell her that he would be speaking through him for a while longer.

She cocked her head to one side. “Why?”

Harry nodded his permission, and Eggsy told her what he had seen when he walked into the room, and about Harry’s suspicion that all the writing had drained his energy.

“And you?” she asked. “What did you experience?”

Harry hesitated. He hadn’t wanted Eggsy to know about this, and he still didn’t- but Nimue couldn’t help solve a problem that she didn’t know existed. “I felt like I was… fading,” he said. “It happened more often in the beginning, where things would start to get dark around the edges or black out altogether. I would feel disconnected, sort of… thin.”

Eggsy swallowed heavily and relayed this information with obvious distress.

“And there were be this... nothingness. Like I... stopped existing, for a while.”

Harry tried not to make it sound as terrible as it felt, but- judging from Eggsy's tone as he explained it to Nimue- he had failed.  

"At any rate," Harry said, continuing quickly, "I _can_ touch things now, but we should… slow down a bit. It's my hope that with time, I'll get stronger and I won't tire so easily, but until then we should find a way for me to talk to you and to Merlin without expending quite so much of my energy.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“I thought I’d leave than in your most capable hands.”

Something about the words, or the way Harry said them, seemed to annoy Eggsy. “He’s says he’ll leave that to you,” Eggsy told her, looking like he'd just bit into something sour.

Happily, Nimue either didn’t notice or didn’t care, slipping easily into her own mind as she searched for a workable solution.

“There’s no need to be rude,” Harry said when she was gone.

“No need to flirt your face off when she can’t even see you either.” Harry spluttered a little- because how could he not? He’d done nothing of the kind. Eggsy was apparently just warming up. “I mean, do I need to remind you that you are in fact dead?”

“If you think I have forgotten that for even a second, you are sorely mistaken.”

Eggsy stopped, paled. “Fuck. Harry, I’m sorry. I got-”

“I know. I haven’t forgotten how difficult this has been for you either. Even ignoring the possibility of you going on a mission in a few days entirely, it would be good for both of us to not be so much in each other’s pockets. You do understand that.”

Eggsy let out a sigh. “Yeah, I know. I know that’s what you been trying to do all along. I even know it’s right. I just get scared. Every time I leave you alone, even if it’s just for a few minutes, I think you’re not going to be there anymore.”  

“I don’t blame you,” Harry said. “And I certainly won’t blame you, if you find you can’t go.” This was the sort of thing that made Harry wish he’d never come back and could have left this sweet boy in peace. But he would never say that aloud; he might not know everything, but he knew the effect it would have. So instead he said: “But know this- I told you I would come back before and I did. It may not have been conventional, but I am here. And whether you’re gone for an hour or a week, I will continue to be here. I will swear to that effect on my honor or whatever else you might consider holy.”

“Your honor will do,” Eggsy said in a small voice.

And Harry smiled at him, maybe a little more tremulously than he meant to, but he couldn’t help the strange tightness in his chest. It felt, inside of him, as though his world had been rocked on its axis. As if the moment that he promised Eggsy everything shifted, realigned itself, remade itself and him along with it- like he couldn’t fade out again if he wanted to. He _swore_.    

“I’ll give Merlin my answer the day after tomorrow,” Eggsy said. “And I probably won’t be sure until a minute before.” It was clear, though, that he was warming to the idea.

“Fair enough,” Harry replied, and his smile grew a little.

Eggsy returned it.

*   *   *

Nimue’s design was a simple but ultimately effective one. It was a machine that allowed Harry to touch one of two buttons, which in turn caused a red or green light to go on, red being ‘no’ and green being ‘yes.’ He expended almost no energy at all hitting the buttons, but whenever he had been alone in a room for a while someone could come in and say, _Are you there?_ and his answer could allay the general worry that he might just wink out of existence one day and no one would know it until Eggsy got back and told them.

Harry was more and more sure, however, that nothing of the kind would happen.

The device rather turned Harry’s every effort to communicate with someone who wasn’t Eggsy into a game of twenty questions, but he had been through worse.

Meanwhile, Nimue claimed that what Harry had said about feeling disconnected and less real at some times than others had gotten her thinking, and that she had gone back over some of her results and found that Harry was, indeed, sometimes more present than others.  She thought it was possible that, under the right circumstances, he might continue to get more corporeal until he was as able to interact with the world as anyone.  

"I don't know what it is about Eggsy," she said.  "But you are...different when he's with you.  As if he anchors you to this world.  You really should be able to touch him without any trouble.”

Nimue had had the foresight to say this when Eggsy wasn’t around, so Harry answered truthfully. Green light filled the room.

“But you can’t.”

Green again.

“Do you know why?”

Harry hesitated just long enough to telegraph that it wasn’t a sure thing before he pressed his button. Green again.

“You have an idea but you’re not sure.”

Harry hated this. Some of Nimue's ideas might have been new, but Harry’s feeling that he shouldn’t touch Eggsy wasn’t. He remembered what he told Eggsy on the very first day. It was a question of mind over matter. Harry- at least subconsciously- still thought he should be as far Eggsy as possible, and this was how it manifested. He pressed the button. Green again.      

Nimue sighed and nodded and they took a break.

*   *   *

They did make progress. Merlin looked over Nimue’s research notes and thought that there was cause for optimism. Indeed, everything was going sufficiently well that Eggsy agreed to go on the mission.

Harry wondered if they weren’t setting themselves up for a fall.

*   *   *

Amazingly enough, the fall never came.

Certainly, Harry felt disconnected with Eggsy gone, but that wasn’t a surprise. More than anything, he got bored. The next time Merlin passed by and asked, “Is there anything you need?” Harry had the whole exchange already planned out in his head.

"Do you need me to do something for you?"

Hesitation, then red.

“Do _you_ need to do anything?”

Green. 

“Something specific?”

Red. 

“You need something to do.” It wasn’t a question. From Merlin’s sigh, he had been anticipating this moment, but Harry responded anyway.

Green. 

“I’ve had a thought about that,” Merlin said. “It would be something… useful but not exactly of vital significance. You understand that I can’t have you listening in to the conversations of important heads of state or the like. As unlikely as it might be, if you suddenly turned visible…”

Green. 

“Right. So. We’ve gotten into Arthur’s old files. There’s paperwork and old video footage that someone needs to take a pass over. Although I don’t personally think it likely that he was selling us out left and right all these years, but it would be nice for me to be able to say for sure that that is the case, and I don’t really have enough eyes to go over it all _and_ do everything else we have to do.”

Green. 

“You’ll do it?”

Green. 

And that was that. Nimue set Harry up with a laptop and the paperwork, some of which Harry took home but which he mainly looked through in the temporary office Merlin had set him up with. He got a great deal done, since he didn’t need to eat or sleep. He settled into something of routine, Merlin poking his head in now and then to ask if he had noticed anything significant- always red- and the days went on.

And then Eggsy got back.

*   *   *

Harry had some of Chester King’s old papers spread out across the kitchen table so he could peruse them without expending too much energy, and he was bent over them with his modified laptop open when Eggsy’s arrival was heralded by the sound of his key scraping the lock a few times before he got the door open.

When Harry met him in the hall, Eggsy didn’t look well. He had obviously made a good effort to clean himself up either on his way in or on his way out of HQ, but there was a good deal of grime still around his hairline. Harry judged his injuries to be fairly minor, but he couldn't be completely sure just looking Eggsy over like this. The way he was holding himself worried Harry- stiff and painful and clearly exhausted.

“You should go to medical,” Harry told him.

“I did,” Eggsy mumbled, wincing slightly as he peeled off his jacket and hung it. “They told me I could go home to rest.”

And by home, of course, they would have meant the house that Eggsy shared with his mother. They would have meant anywhere with a person who was real and alive and would actually be able to take care of him.

But then Eggsy pitched forward, and Harry caught him as if there had never been any question of his not being able to do so. And that was right, Harry thought, because what could he possibly still be in this world for if he couldn’t help Eggsy when he needed it. Harry laid a hand on the back of Eggsy’s neck. It took him a second to manage it, but not because his fingers slipped through Eggsy- they didn’t, not even once- but because his hand was trembling. He squeezed lightly and felt Eggsy relax, completely, under his touch. "Harry," he murmured.  

Harry carefully drew Eggsy’s arm around his shoulders and half-lead, half-carried him up the stairs.

He sat Eggsy down on the foot of the bed and went to fetch a washcloth to clean him up with- anything more involved would have to wait until Eggsy was rested. Over his shoulder, Harry said, “I can take it, then, that you aren’t hurt?”

“Nah.” Eggsy collapsed back on the mattress. “Just tired, is all.”

“Then you don’t regret going?”

Harry lingered in the doorway and Eggsy turned his head to hold his eyes. “No, I don’t. It was good to get out there.” He turned his gaze toward the ceiling. “Did wonder why it was so important to you, though.”

“I believe- as I have always believed- that you would make a wonderful agent.” Harry sat on the edge of the bed, next to Eggsy’s legs, and drew him up gently to better clean his face. “I fear I failed to impress upon you how proud of you I am, and how I… truly admire you. That would be the case even if you decided you wanted to nothing more to do with Kingsman.” Harry paused for a moment before resuming his ministrations, taking in the beautiful- if somewhat baffling- look of amazement on Eggsy’s face. “But if you do want that life- as I think you do- there is no one that I would rather have take my place at the table.”

Eggsy shook his head immediately. “ _You’re_ Galahad.”

Harry caught hold of Eggsy’s chin tenderly. “We can’t possibly know whether or not I will be able to function in that capacity ever again, Eggsy. Don’t think that way.”

Eggsy didn’t respond, but there was an unhappy set to his jaw. Harry didn’t think he’d won the round. Yet.

Gently, Harry released him. He determined that Eggsy’s face was as cleaned up as it was likely to be and set his washcloth aside. “May I?” he asked, hands hovering at Eggsy’s collar. Eggsy nodded, eyes wide, and just stared at Harry as he stripped off Eggsy’s tie and started on his shirt. Harry kept talking. “It’s important to me that you consider this, Eggsy.” He pushed Eggsy’s shirt over his shoulders. “But I won’t force you to take the position if Merlin offers it to you.”

Eggsy swallowed heavily. “Do you think he will offer it to me?”

“Yes,” Harry answer simply. He pulled Eggsy’s undershirt over his head and cast it aside, looking Eggsy over. By the looks of things, he hadn't been entirely truthful- he did have a few bruises, but thankfully they seemed minor. Harry’s hand lingered against Eggsy’s ribcage, his thumb passing lightly over one such bruise.  

Eggsy’s breath hitched- but not, Harry thought, with pain. Eggsy reached out, his hand coming to rest warm and solid over Harry’s other hand where it was braced against the bed. “This is new,” he whispered.

Harry shrugged. “You needed my help.” He didn’t know how to explain it- how clear cut what he was and wasn’t capable of had become the moment Eggsy had been in need.

“You always help me.”

“I always try.”  

Harry hesitated before letting his hand drift lower, finding Eggsy’s belt and unbuckling it one-handed. He hadn’t been thinking of how charged the moment was, that he was touching Eggsy, easily, naturally. That he was _undressing_ him. He was thinking about it now, and for a moment he was afraid he might lose solidity again, but he didn’t. He slid Eggsy’s belt free and then pressed Eggsy back into the bed again before undoing his trousers.

“Up,” he said quietly. Eggsy obligingly lifted his hips and let Harry slip his trousers off.

“Harry,” Eggsy said, a little breathlessly. Harry noticed that Eggsy was half hard- not too odd, in Harry’s experience, given his age and the adrenaline that must have gone through his system over the course of the day. Harry ignored it as best he could. “Harry,” Eggsy said again, his fingers pressing into Harry’s hand.

Harry met Eggsy’s eyes, and there was something in them- something bright and wild. Harry wasn’t sure what exactly he had done to make that expression happen. He wasn’t sure if he was afraid that he might do it again, or afraid that he might fail to.

“You get that I- fuck, Harry.  I love you,” Eggsy said quietly.  

Harry hesitated. He tried to tell himself that Eggsy didn’t mean it how it sounded. That of course Eggsy loved him, it was no surprise, Harry had had ample evidence of it since he’d been back. That it didn’t mean anything _more_.

But the longer Harry took in the look on Eggsy’s face, the more he recognized it. It wasn’t the kind of platonic affection that Harry might have expected- it was _longing_. And there was something else in it as well, something that wasn’t hope. It was the look of a man jumping out of an airplane knowing that he might have a parachute but relatively sure that he didn’t. Since this was Eggsy, he’d had that look on his face before.

He was living in a world of possibility, a world where everything might still come to a good end- and yet completely convinced that he was actually about to fall to his death.

Eggsy was ready for the brush off, for the _I’m flattered, Eggsy_. The _if circumstances were different_ that actually meant _never but I’m too kind to say_. And Harry wasn’t kind at all, because those were all on the tip of his tongue- and yet for some reason they wouldn’t come out. And why not? Harry had missed that Eggsy had feelings for him, like a fool- but he was sure, now, that Eggsy would get over him, just as he would eventually have done if Harry hadn't come back like this. And yet he couldn’t bring himself to say the words. Because he didn’t _want_ to say the words.

Eggsy looked uncertain. The script hadn’t gone as he’d expected, so he couldn’t backtrack, but he couldn’t begin to hope either.

Harry turned his hand under Eggsy’s and lifted it, kissing Eggsy’s knuckles softly.

Eggsy gave a soft whine. Harry drew back in time to see Eggsy’s mouth drop open, and suddenly Eggsy surged up and that mouth was on Harry’s, a little too hard and a lot too desperate. Teeth clacked together and Harry couldn’t quite figure out how to make it better, wasn’t sure if he should try- and then Eggsy tilted his head just slightly and he had figured it out all on his own, and he was really kissing Harry, all fierce and wet and sweet. Harry didn’t move, couldn’t move, until Eggsy made this keening noise that fairly broke his heart. How had he missed this? How-

Harry’s fingers curled around Eggsy’s shoulder, and as the kiss ended he pressed his mouth very softly to Eggsy’s lips. “Are you cold?” he asked quietly, hardly recognizing his own voice.

There was something sad in Eggsy’s eyes, like he knew they weren’t on the same page, as he shook his head.

“You should get some rest,” Harry said.

Eggsy nodded that time, awkwardly climbing into the bed properly. Harry rose and picked up discarded clothes, listening to the sound of Eggsy’s breathing as he put them with everything else that needed to be washed. Eggsy’s breathing didn’t even out into sleep until after Harry turned out the light and, without prompting, lay down beside him.  

*   *   *

Harry opened his eyes and sunshine was streaming across the bed and Eggsy was in his arms. He managed to disentangle himself from Eggsy without waking him and slipped downstairs, electing to do a little more work before Eggsy woke.

They would have to talk when Eggsy did. Harry wasn’t looking forward to it.

Perhaps an hour later, Harry heard the shower, and fifteen minutes or so after that Eggsy padded down the stairs wearing his t-shirt and pajama bottoms. “Morning,” he said to Harry. His hair was ruffled and his feet were bare and he looked so painfully young and lovely.

Harry looked down. “Good morning,” he said, almost choking halfway through. He could feel Eggsy’s eyes on him, taking in the papers and the laptop strewn across the table. He must have missed them the night before. Harry couldn’t tell if Eggsy was pleased about what Harry was doing or not. He couldn’t make up his mind not to care.

It set Harry off balance when Eggsy didn’t mention the night before. He ended up lingering uselessly at Eggsy’s side in the kitchen as he prepared his breakfast, and through it all, Eggsy kept watching him with a sharp, searching expression on his face.  

“Would you hand me the cereal?” Eggsy asked.

It occurred to Harry that he was being tested only when he reached for the box and his hand slipped right through.  

“This again.” Eggsy’s voice was sharp, but he didn’t entirely sound surprised. “You were absolutely fine last night,” he reminded Harry, as though he could possibly have forgotten. Eggsy got the box himself, pouring some cereal into the bowl and then setting it down again much harder than necessary. He added some milk next, but then he shoved it all aside angrily. “I’m onto you,” he said, pointing his spoon at Harry like a weapon.

“Oh?” Harry asked, stiffening.

“Yeah.” Eggsy’s cheeks were flushed and his eyes were blazing. “You get yourself together when you have to. For me. Because you came back for _me_.”

“Yes,” Harry whispered. All of that had suddenly become very clear to him, and he found it impossible to lie.

“Then stop acting like it don’t mean anything! You may’ve decided that you don’t, but you and your idiot head control what you can and can’t do, and those things always come down to me, don’t they? You touched me last night. You let me kiss you last night.”

“I didn’t…” Harry trailed off, afraid to say it and afraid _not_ to say it and still utterly unsure which path was the safest one. “I didn’t _let_ you kiss me. I wanted you to. I wanted… I want…” The words dried up on his tongue again, but judging by the look on Eggsy’s face- jaw set with determination, eyes lit with wonder- he didn’t need Harry to finish after all.

“Then you gotta get it through your head.”

“What?” Harry asked helplessly.    

“That you can touch me. You can _have_ me.” Eggsy was standing very still, not reaching out, but somehow the intensity of his eyes on Harry felt like a caress all the same. “I’m yours.”

A part of Harry wanted to take the door he failed to take the night before, to find a way to gracefully bow out of what Eggsy was offering- because Eggsy deserved… well, he deserved many things, not the least of which was someone more alive than Harry happened to be.

But he didn’t. Instead he looked at Eggsy’s jaw and his eyes and recognized that look from far too many occasions. It was the look that said that Eggsy, for whatever reason, had chosen him.

And he realized that he had been incredibly dense.

Not for not realizing that Eggsy had feelings for him- though he had certainly been very stupid in that regard- but for thinking it mattered whether or not he thought Eggsy deserved better. Eggsy was young, certainly, but he was older than his years. He had been through things that had destroyed lesser men, and not only had those things not broken him, they had made him stronger, better, _kinder_. If there was ever a moment when Eggsy didn’t belong at the round table, it had been because he was too good for it. He had earned more than Harry’s pride- he had earned his respect, and if Harry respected him, and he _did_ , he had to also respect that he didn’t get to decide what was good for Eggsy.    

Harry’s reasoning had failed him quite a lot, since Kentucky. Perhaps it was time to try having a little faith.  

Harry raised his hands, cupping Eggsy’s face easily. Harry wasn’t sure if it was him or Eggsy or the universe itself that let out that sigh of relief, but he could feel the tension unspooling in all three. He leaned and rested his forehead against Eggsy’s.  

Eggsy dropped the spoon with a clatter and lifted his own hands, making fists of Harry’s shirt. “I’m yours,” he repeated.

“Mine,” Harry said thoughtfully. He turned his head, nuzzling Eggsy’s nose and then catching his lips. For a while, Eggsy seemed content to let him lead, and the kiss was gentler than the one they had shared the night before, less urgent. Harry nudged Eggsy’s lips apart and just explored him for a while, tasted him- and he could taste him, which made for another sense that was apparently present and correct after all. Eggsy tasted mostly like toothpaste at the moment, but perfect all the same.  

And then he nipped at Harry’s lips, evidently losing patience at last.

Harry growled, the sting of it turning him desperate, hungry for more. He dug his thumbs into Eggsy’s cheeks, and backed him up. Eggsy made a sound when his back hit the counter that would have been worrying if he hadn’t clutched at Harry’s shirt to haul him closer at the same time.

Harry kept kissing him, kissing him _hard_ , and Eggsy kissed back, pressing into Harry’s mouth like he wanted to map every corner of it. Harry sucked at his tongue and let his hands wander, his palm settling briefly on the smooth length of Eggsy’s neck. Harry felt his pulse thrum against it. _Perfect_. Better still was the way Eggsy arched into his touch, moaning into Harry’s mouth as Harry dragged his hand lower, down his chest to his stomach before finally settling on his hips.           

He gripped tight, lifting Eggsy up to sit on the edge of the counter. Eggsy made a pleased noise against Harry’s lips and kissed up the side of his face, mouth pressed into Harry’s temple as he murmured, “Want you so much.” His arms wrapped around Harry’s neck, drawing him closer.

Harry came to rest between Eggsy’s legs, leaving as little space between them as he could contrive, and Eggsy made a noise low in his throat, fingers clawing at Harry’s back.

Harry teased at the hem of Eggsy’s t-shirt and then let his hands slide under it, caressing bare skin. It felt so freeing and so right and yet so terrifying to _touch_ him at last. Harry listened to the soft noises Eggsy made as Harry dragged his nails lightly over his ribcage, and the litany of curses that he pressed into Harry’s hair as Harry rolled a nipple under his palm. “So sensitive,” Harry breathed against Eggsy’s throat.

He drew away from Eggsy long enough to peel the shirt over his head and then he bent again, pressing open-mouthed kisses to his chest and passing his tongue over a nipple as Eggsy whined and squirmed against him. “Oh, fuck you,” Eggsy hissed when Harry sucked hard.  

Harry looked up at him. With all that smooth pale skin barred and his head thrown back, Eggsy was very possibly the loveliest thing Harry had ever seen. “If you like,” he said, pleased at how even his voice sounded despite the flash of heat that went through him at the very thought of it, his half hard cock stiffening further in his trousers.           

Eggsy’s eyes found his and locked on like heat-seeking missiles. Harry held his gaze through his lashes.

Eggsy swallowed so heavily that Harry _heard_ it.

He leaned upward and kissed the curve of Eggsy’s throat until Eggsy’s hands found his face and dragged Harry up to meet his mouth. “Oh, fuck, Harry,” he whined, cock like iron digging into Harry’s stomach. “You- _really_?”

Harry sucked Eggsy’s lower lip into his mouth and released it slow before backing off from Eggsy a little. “Come along,” he said gently. He took Eggsy’s hand and tugged him toward the stairs.  

For a while, Harry had lived in fear of the space between the moments he was aware of- but the way that the journey to his bedroom passed in a blur felt so right, everything snapping back into perfect focus as Eggsy hit the bed and pulled Harry down after him.  

His fingers slid back into Harry’s hair as they kissed again, pulling, and there it was again- that sweet edge of pain. Harry had always been of the opinion that it was pain that let a person know they were alive, and with Eggsy touching him he felt it again. _Alive_.

“Don’t let me go,” Harry breathed against Eggsy’s lips.

There was something a little sad but unbelievably tender in Eggsy’s eyes. “I won’t,” he promised. He let his hand come to rest over Harry’s heart. “I’m gonna show you how much I won’t.”

And it was like a dam breaking inside Harry- inside them both- when Harry believed it. Somehow, after everything, there was still more- more desperation, more fervor, more _oh thank god it’s not too late_. Eggsy kissed him, clung to him, like he wanted to climb underneath Harry’s skin, and Harry had every intention of letting him do his utmost.

Eggsy’s fingers curled into a fist, gripping Harry’s jacket, and he broke the kiss. “Can you just wish yourself naked?” he asked breathlessly.

“I’ve never tried.”

“Well don’t. I been thinking about taking this thing off you since we _met_.”

Harry almost- almost- managed to bridle at the thought of a very fine- and very expensive- suit being referred to as ‘this thing’, but it was impossible to do so when Eggsy bit his kiss-swollen lower lip and reached out with such wonder on his face. He slipped Harry’s jacket over his shoulders tenderly and undid his tie before unbuttoning his shirt, slow, all with this look in his eyes like he still couldn’t quite believe he was permitted this. Harry felt so unbelievably lucky to have lived- if lived was even the term- long enough to prove him wrong.

When Eggsy finally had Harry’s chest barred he bent and unerringly found that same spot over Harry’s heart, kissing him.

Harry had forgotten, for a while, about unfinished business and last wishes, the question of why he was here and whether it might be temporary- but as Eggsy unbuckled his belt and slid it free Harry realized that if he had either of those it would have been this. Always, always _this_.

And when Eggsy finally had Harry naked he pressed him into the bed, settling between Harry’s legs like he belonged there, like he finally believed that was true, and Harry thought, _It’s worth it._ _Even if there’s no tomorrow, it’s worth it._

Harry slid his hands down Eggsy’s bare back, fingers gliding over the knobs of his spine and down, pushing Eggsy’s pajamas down over his hips. He cupped Eggsy’s ass, fingers slipping between his cheeks, and Eggsy made noise, pushing back into Harry’s touch. “If you changed your mind-”

“No,” Harry said immediately. He wouldn’t do Eggsy the disservice of pretending not to be interested, pretending not to want him in every conceivable way, but if there was the slightest chance that they only had tonight, that wouldn’t be what he needed. What they both needed. “No,” he repeated. “I didn’t change my mind.”

“Okay.” Eggsy had the sweetest look on his face, leaning up and kissing Harry’s jaw softly. “But just so you know, I’m game.”

Harry squeezed just hard enough to make a point. “Some other time,” he said. Promising Eggsy had been enough before, and he could only hope it would be again.    

Eggsy’s smile was like the sun coming up, like he knew exactly what Harry had been thinking just then, exactly how much those words really weighed. He wriggled out of his pants, kicking them off a little awkwardly and laughing at himself. Harry leaned back on his elbows and watched him, feeling things he’d never entirely thought himself capable of.  

“I’m yours, too,” Harry told him. “You know that, right?”

“Yeah,” Eggsy said, still laughing a little as he settled back between Harry’s spread legs and kissed the skin over Harry’s heart again. “I do know that.” He slid down, kissing Harry’s stomach. “I do.” He pressed another kiss to the head of Harry’s cock, making him gasp. “I do.”

Eggsy pulled Harry into his mouth without ceremony, wet heat suddenly engulfing him. “Fuck,” he breathed, head rolling back against the bedclothes briefly before he could meet Eggsy’s gaze again.

Eggsy managed to look utterly delighted by this reaction even as he sucked and licked at Harry’s cock like he was hungry for it. He pulled off with a wet pop and wrapped his fingers around Harry, stroking him a few times and lightly fondling his balls with his palm. “May I-” he started, polite effect rather ruined when he lifted Harry’s hips a little without waiting for further permission and pushed his tongue behind Harry’s balls, licking his rim.

The feeling of Eggsy’s tongue teasing and then, faintly, breaching his hole made Harry want to swear, colorfully, and since Eggsy certainly seemed to like that Harry saw no reason not to.

And then Eggsy went and fucking _moaned_ like that was the best thing he’d ever heard and Harry was the best thing he’d ever tasted, and he sounded like he was settling in for the long haul, so Harry hooked his leg over Eggsy’s shoulders and let it rest there, heel pressing into Eggsy’s back. Eggsy licked him open, spit sliding down and slicking him, and every touch left him wanting more.

Eggsy’s tongue must have been sore when he finally drew back, looking up at Harry with his mouth soaked and smirking. Harry gathered his wits quickly enough and met his eyes for a moment before jerking his head toward the bedside table.

Eggsy mock-rolled his eyes. “I see how it’s gonna be,” he grumbled, pulling himself up to crawl in that direction. “I do all the work while you laze around.”

Harry didn’t say _I could take you apart, my beautiful boy_. Judging by the flush riding high on Eggsy’s cheeks, Harry’s eyes did it for him. He just gave a smirk of his own and said, “Here I thought you liked showing me what you could do.”

“I do,” Eggsy said again, fairly tripping over his tongue to say it. “I do.”

“So get to it,” Harry replied with a slow smile.

Eggsy rifled through the drawer, coming up with a bottle of lube and then frowning. “Condoms, Harry?” he asked. Harry wasn’t entirely surprised there weren’t any- and it had been such a long time since he had brought anyone back here that they probably would have been expired regardless. “I might have some in my-” Eggsy hesitated, stopped, swallowed heavily. “I _am_ clean. If you’d take my word for it.” That doubt- Harry should have known that it wouldn’t be gone forever- was in his eyes again, like he couldn’t imagine a world in which Harry _would_ , a world in which he was the kind of person someone like Harry trusted that much.  

Harry reached for him, fingers pressing into the back of his neck. “I would,” he said seriously. “But Eggsy-” and then he couldn’t help the humor creeping into his voice- “I’m not sure it technically matters.”

It actually took Eggsy a second to remember why, as though he had genuinely forgotten how they had come to be here in the first place. Harry was almost sorry to have reminded him, because when Eggsy realized he laughed out loud, but there was something desperate and frightened in his eyes.

“Come here, darling boy,” Harry said, tugging on him.

Eggsy came into his arms without hesitation, pressing fervent kisses into Harry’s neck and shoulders as Harry gripped him tightly. “Oh my God Harry,” Eggsy whispered, voice shaking. “This is fucking insane, ain’t it?”

“Yes,” Harry admitted, stroking his naked back. “Too insane?”

Eggsy shook his head, face pressing into the crook of Harry’s neck. “Not if I means I get to be with you.” He drew back enough to kiss Harry hard. “Nothing is too much if it means I get to be with you, okay?”

“So be with me,” Harry said slowly. He squeezed the back of Eggsy’s neck and then released him.

“Yeah,” Eggsy said.  

There was still something a little strange, a little distant, in his eyes, but Harry didn’t remark on it- and Eggsy slicked his fingers and settled between Harry’s legs again, two fingers slipping into him with relative ease, and then suddenly he looked up at Harry and he was back with him. Harry held Eggsy’s eyes, the sound of encouragement he made melting into a moan as Eggsy spread his fingers a little, working him open.

Eggsy took his time and Harry didn’t push him. It had been a long time since he’d taken this part, anyway, and he was reacquainting himself with the sensations, stretching muscles- figuratively speaking- that had gone unused for quite a while, if indeed they had ever been used at all. After all, Harry’s body wasn’t exactly his body, was it? He didn’t know what his body even was.

Before, those thoughts might have made him lose solidity, launched a minor existential crisis. Especially when the questions kept coming- like why did he feel his heart was racing at Eggsy’s touch when he probably didn’t exactly have a heart, or why he could even get hard when he didn’t have blood flow. But suddenly it didn’t seem to matter. He was hard because he was with Eggsy, and he had always, always wanted him. And his heart and his body, whatever they were, responded to Eggsy because they were his to do what he liked with and always would be.

“Be with me,” he said again, head rolling back as Eggsy moved to three fingers and then four and worked them deep.

“Yeah,” Eggsy repeated, voice drawn tight with wonder. He withdrew his fingers carefully and then hesitated again. “I wanna be so good for you,” he said quietly.

Harry sat up awkwardly, already a little sore. He squirted a little lube on his own hands and reached out, wrapping his fingers around the silken length of Eggsy’s cock. “You are,” he whispered, kissing Eggsy’s temple. “Come here, darling boy,” he said again, and pulled Eggsy down with him.  

Eggsy didn’t say anything else, just pressed into him slow. Harry’s eyes fell closed and he hooked his legs around Eggsy’s waist, murmuring words of praise at the slight burn and ache that gave way to the sensation of places he hadn’t realized felt empty getting filled up. Eggsy felt so good inside of him, so right. And the soft whining sound he made as he finally slid home was like music.

It was something of a struggle to open his eyes again, but it was worth it when he did and saw Eggsy, lips slack, looking down at the place where their bodies met. Eggsy reached between them, lightly touching his cock and Harry’s rim where he stretched around him. “Oh fuck,” he whispered. “Fuck, Harry.” He groaned and his hips shoved forward.

Harry laid his palms flat on Eggsy’s chest. “That’s it, darling,” he whispered, sliding them up to Eggsy's shoulders, his throat. “Christ, you’re so lovely.”

“I am?’ Eggsy laughed breathlessly. He pulled almost completely out before pressing back in again and going still. “Look at _you_.”

Gripping the back of Eggsy’s neck, Harry said, “Don’t stop, don’t-”

“ _Oh_ ,” Eggsy moaned, thrusting. “Yes. Harry-”

Harry’s head rolled back as he took him. “Fuck,” he breathed, feeling split open and _perfect_. “That’s _it_ , Eggsy.” His heels dug into the backs of Eggsy’s thighs, encouraging him to go a little harder.

Eggsy did. The rhythm he established was slow but hard and he bent, kissing Harry’s neck. “Good?” he asked with a snap of his hips, lips wet and hot against the hinge of Harry’s jaw, the shell of his ear.

“Yes,” Harry managed, breathless and entirely unable to care _how_. “ _Yes_.”    

Eggsy groaned again and pressed open-mouthed kisses all over Harry’s face. Eggsy fucked into him relentlessly, and he never stopped kissing him, as if he had forgotten _how_ to stop.

Harry kissed him back such as he could, fingers sliding from Eggsy’s shoulders to his back and digging into his shoulder blades. Harry would never get over how good Eggsy felt under his hands, against him, _in_ him. _I won’t leave you again_ , he thought- would have said aloud, probably, if Eggsy’s mouth hadn’t been right there to swallow the words. _Not if I can possibly help it._

Eggsy was absolutely amazing at this- not that Harry had doubted him, not that he ever did- doing exactly as he’d promised and showing Harry how well he could fuck him, but eventually his thrusts started to come a little faster, a little more erratic.

Harry savored it for a second, pushing back against him, and then unsealed their mouths. “Are you- Eggsy-”

“Yeah,” Eggsy panted, voice so tight it snapped halfway through. “Sorry- fuck- Harry-”

“It’s all right,” Harry managed. “Go ahead, darling, let me feel you-”

Eggsy’s hips bucked. “Fuck- oh- come with me, Harry, okay- come-”

They reached down at the same time, fingers tangling over Harry’s cock. It didn’t take much- the touch of Eggsy’s smaller- _perfect_ \- hand, the sound he made when he found his release, the aftershocks that pushed him as far inside Harry as he would go- and Harry was following him, come splashing all over his stomach and Eggsy’s fingers.

Eggsy collapsed against him and a little to the side, still breathing hard. “Fuck, Harry,” he said, clean hand coming to rest where it always seemed to, right over Harry’s heart.

“What do you feel when you do that?” Harry asked him.

“It beats,” Eggsy said, sucking in a breath. “I don’t know why, but it does.”  

Harry knew why. The laws of the universe, why he had been allowed to come back, why he felt more and more real every second he was… he might not understand that yet, he might _never_ understand it, but he knew this part. It was beating because Eggsy was looking for it. Harry stroked Eggsy’s back with one hand and reached down with the other, gathering a little come on his fingertips and frowning at it. He might have been willing to take most of this on faith, but it didn’t keep him from wondering.

“You worry too much,” Eggsy told him quietly. He sucked his own fingers into his mouth and said, “Tastes normal to me.” He caught Harry staring him, and eased his fingers out from between his lips a little slower than strictly necessary.

Harry hesitated, bringing his own fingers to Eggsy’s lips. Eggsy let Harry feed it to him, a languid half-smile on his face. Harry didn’t say _you’ll be the death of me_ , since evidently Eggsy was the opposite, he just said, “Beautiful.”

Eggsy pulled out of him gently, and though Harry still felt empty with him gone it was Eggsy who sighed miserably, like he would have stayed in Harry forever if he could have.

Eggsy sat up, grabbing some tissues from the bedside table to clean Harry up, and he curled around him like he didn’t want to take his eyes off Harry for even a second. He wasn’t exactly built to be the big spoon in the relationship, but he seemed willing to make up for it by being limber, pulling Harry’s head half into his lap and leaning over him, fingers stroking through his hair.

“You’ll get a crick in your neck,” Harry said. He felt tired in a way he hadn’t since he’d been… whatever he was now. Not worn out from overexertion, just easy. Peaceful and warm.

“I’ll be fine,” Eggsy said, something frighteningly tender in his expression. “Just don’t go anywhere, okay?”  

“Not if I can help it,” Harry promised.  

*   *   *

The next time Harry opened his eyes, Eggsy was still leaning over him. “Hi,” he said quietly.

“Hi,” Eggsy replied with a soft, slow smile. He reached out and touched Harry’s face gently, tracing a line from Harry’s forehead to his chin. “How do you feel?”

“Good,” Harry told him. It was true, the truest it might have ever been. “How do I seem?”

“Good,” Eggsy said. “You didn’t fade out once.”

Harry smiled at him, and leaned up to kiss Eggsy. Eggsy kissed him back, clinging like a limpet. It was when he noticed what Eggsy was clinging to that Harry realized his suit had reappeared on his body. It was oddly easy not to care when they were wrapped up in each other. This was Harry’s life now, and he would learn to accept all the little impossibilities that came with it, because he had no intention of leaving.  

He indulged Eggsy- and himself- for a few more moments before he broke the kiss. “You need to eat,” he told Eggsy.

Eggsy nodded and unfolded himself with an effort. He pulled his pajama bottoms back on and they went back to the kitchen, where Eggsy’s cereal had turned to mush. He threw it out and started again as Harry wrapped his arms around him from behind, not doubting for a second that he would be able to. Eggsy leaned back into his chest, his smile faintly bittersweet. “I keep getting scared that you’re just gonna slip through my hands again,” Eggsy whispered, tone a little bashful. “Or disappear altogether.”

And Harry was sorry, suddenly, for not warning him about all the times he had considered that a very real possibility. “I told you,” he said, kissing the side of Eggsy’s face, smooth under his lips. “I won’t. Not if I can possibly help it. I could this time, couldn’t I?”

Before Eggsy could reply, the doorbell rang, shattering the quiet.

With Eggsy barely dressed as he was, it seemed entirely practical that Eggsy should go upstairs and make himself decent while Harry answered the door- and it was only when Harry was already in the middle of doing so that he realized that there might be a problem with that plan.

Out on the front step, Merlin blinked, then stared. “Harry?” he said.

“Merlin?” Eggsy shouted from upstairs.

“You can see me?” Harry asked.

“You can see him?” Eggsy shouted.

Merlin rolled his eyes, though the effect of the gesture was somewhat marred by how pale he had gone. “Yes. Yes I can.”

Harry stepped aside and let Merlin come in, closing the door behind him. They lingered for a moment in the front hall as Merlin reached out, looking oddly as though he was about to take a dive as he did so. He released a long breath as he caught hold of Harry’s arm easily.

“You feel… warm,” he remarked.

“Do I?” Harry asked stupidly. He felt as surprised as Merlin looked, frankly- but he wondered if he should be. Whether science or logic or anything else would suggest it, he certainly felt changed on a fundamental level.

“Is the suit… always there?” Merlin asked curiously.

“Nope,” Eggsy called down happily. “Sometimes he’s naked.”

Merlin pulled a face. “Well,” he said, clearing his throat twice. “Whatever you did- and let me assure you that I wish to hear no more about it- I’m glad you’re… all right.”

“Thank you,” Harry replied. He beckoned Merlin into the kitchen, and made him tea, because that was a thing he could do now. He had a feeling that it wouldn't drain him so much now as it would have before. “Were you… here for a reason?” he asked as he worked.

“Just to check on Eggsy- and on you, I suppose. There’s no need for either of you to come in today, by the way.”

“Good,” Eggsy said, arriving in the kitchen. He was dressed only in a t-shirt and jeans, but presentable all the same. “I got plans for him today.”

Merlin gave an exaggerated shudder, but there was a gentle warmth in his eyes. “Now, to discuss the long term…”

“Harry could be Galahad again,” Eggsy said, almost too quickly. “I know it.”

“Perhaps,” Merlin replied with some reluctance, “but while we have had agents come back from the dead, it’s never been quite so… literally before. There is no precedent for this. You understand if we have to tread carefully. And I believe you know that I had something different in mind for Galahad.”

Eggsy swallowed, a torn light in his eyes. On the one hand, he wanted this, Harry knew he did. And on the other… “I don’t want nothing that’s gonna put Harry out of a job.”

“Fair enough,” Merlin said. “You’ll recall that there is, in fact, another seat left open.”

“Now-” Harry started.

Eggsy’s eyes were glinting, suddenly.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Harry said.

“Why not?” Merlin looked supremely pleased with himself. “After all, it’s said that Arthur will come back from the dead as well.”

It wasn’t as though Harry shouldn’t have seen this coming when Merlin started putting him to work on Arthur’s old files. This had probably been Merlin’s plan from the very beginning, and Harry barely even resented him for it.

When Harry brought him his tea, Merlin rested a light hand on his wrist. “We’ll take this one step at a time, of course. But don’t think for a second that I’m not going to make use of you. There are those who want _me_ to be Arthur.”

Harry managed hold back a smile right up until he heard Eggsy snicker, and then it broke free. “Well,” he said. “Of course, if it’s a question of saving you…”

Merlin made a rude gesture and sipped his tea.

Eggsy brought his third attempt at a bowl of cereal to the table along with some toast. Harry looked at it. He felt… hungry. So he reached out. He took a bite and nothing peculiar happened. The world didn’t end. It was just toast, and it tasted good, though not quite as good as the delighted smile on Eggsy’s face when Harry leaned over and kissed him over Merlin’s furious protests.

One step and at a time.

**Author's Note:**

> Come see me on [tumblr](http://potentiality-26.tumblr.com/).


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